6 26 34 40 Extracts News from around the university
Percy and LISA
UF space researchers play pivotal roles in major missions
About the cover:
This first color image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows thousands of galaxies in an area of the sky about the size of a grain of sand. Image
A Harsh Environment
Making space more hospitable, for people and machines
Mission Control
UF leads the way at the Space Life Sciences Lab
Ask an Expert 9 questions about exoplanets
Heavenly Beauty The Art and Science of Astrophotography
Explore
Editor:
Associate
Art
Design
Writers:
Copy
Printing:
Member
Welcome to the 75th issue of Explore magazine! Over the past 28 years, Explore has provided a window into research at the University of Florida. From agriculture to medicine and engineering to the arts, Explore has chronicled the fascinating, important work of hundreds of faculty.
In that first issue, Spring 1996, then-Vice President for Research Karen Holbrook celebrated that in the previous fiscal year UF had exceeded $200 million in annual research awards for the first time. In 2024, the UF research enterprise exceeds $1 billion per year. In 1996, UF was a good regional university with higher aspirations. In 2024, it’s one of the nation’s premier universities, regularly ranked among the top 5.
In other words, we’ve come a long way. From the McKnight Brain Institute to the Emerging Pathogens Institute to the AI Initiative, university faculty and leadership have identified challenges and opportunities and organized around addressing them.
In this issue of Explore, we are highlighting one of our newest institutes that spans colleges and disciplines in an area of importance for our nation and planet— space research. UF has a long history in space, but we have never had an organization for promoting interdisciplinary research and collaboration — until now.
The Astraeus Space Institute will be the collaborative hub for faculty to identify opportunities and collaborations that will enable them to compete for even more grants and for UF to become a go-to resource for other university researchers and commercial entities to get their projects to space.
As the historical home to America’s space program, Florida’s space-related economy is growing rapidly. Last year, 72 rockets launched from the Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This year, that number is expected to reach 120. Over 300 aerospace companies have located in Florida just since 2022. Space Florida predicts space will have a $5.9 billion impact on Florida’s economy over the next five years, as SpaceX, Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance and others grow their Florida businesses.
To highlight UF’s commitment to space, UF Research is partnering with the UF Alumni Association on complementary issues of Explore and the Florida GATOR magazine and mailing them together to both of our audiences. We hope you enjoy reading about UF space research, and about the alumni and students who work in the space industry.
As you read this issue of Explore, you’ll be amazed at all the space research we already do, and understand why now is the time for the University of Florida to take its place as one of the nation’s premier space institutions.
David P. Norton Vice President for Research
UF research spending at record $1.26 billion for FY2024
Federally funded research accounts for about 46% of UF’s total and it has increased 46% over the last five years, to a record $581 million in 2024
Overall, research spending was up about $8 million over last year.
Nearly half of the research spending was in the six colleges of UF Health, led by the College of Medicine in Gainesville and Jacksonville with $370.5 million; the College of Public Health & Health Professions with $37.3 million; the College of Pharmacy with $36.4 million; the College of Veterinary Medicine with $29 million; the College of Dentistry with $18.9 million; and the College of Nursing with $5.3 million
Faculty at the Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology in Jupiter accounted for $101 million in research spending.
The College of Education faculty conducted $21.1 million in research aimed at enhancing “whole school” improvement, from early childhood readiness to teacher preparation and classroom technology advances.
SCRIPPS
Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering faculty conducted $150.4 million in research on such things as cybersecurity, accessibility to computer technology, storm readiness, retail theft deterrence and robotics.
Faculty in UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) conducted over $269.6 million in research addressing the health of crops and livestock important to the state and beyond, including citrus, tomatoes and cattle, and responding to environmental challenges like invasive species and new human and animal diseases.
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty conducted $60.2 million in research on areas including black holes, plastics recycling, the exploration of Mars, and the ethics of artificial intelligence.
In the Florida Museum of Natural History, scientists conducted $9.5 million in research on living species like butterflies, birds, and fish, and on fossils like the Megalodon shark and prehistoric elephants.
College of Education
UF accounts for about 40% of the State University System of Florida’s research spending. Research at Florida’s state universities has an estimated statewide economic impact of about $4 billion annually, according to recent studies.
Astraeus meaning “Starry-one.” Greek mythological figure with dominion over the stars and planets.
In 1998, my colleagues and I watched from the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center as one of our experiments rocketed into orbit on the Space Shuttle Columbia. It was thrilling to know that astronauts would be caring for these plants, and doing experiments our experiments from UF that would help us better understand life in space. Over the years, we have sent 15 more experiments to space, and the thrill is still there every time.
There are hundreds of scientists and scholars here at UF who are just like us. Their research ranges from the empirical how to grow plants or design new pharmaceuticals in space to the abstract how does space exploration impact human ethics, culture and imagination. Until now, we’ve each worked in our own disciplines and only learned about each other by chance. After all, our various disciplines are spread across UF’s 16 colleges and a dozen professional societies. There has been no real structure at UF to collaborate on space research in ways that would be useful to science, to industry and, indeed, to humanity.
The Astraeus Space Institute is changing that. With Astraeus, UF is making a commitment to promoting a community that is dedicated to space exploration. Space is a vast, challenging place to explore and an environment in need of bold and transformative, yet intellectually moored, approaches to discovery and development.
In awarding the institute $2.5 million through his strategic initiative, former UF President Ben Sasse invited us to “imagine a hub that brings together experts from across UF to revolutionize the way we approach space travel and exploration. The Astraeus Space Institute will be an incredible resource for UF, and it will help us work closely with the brightest minds of our time to solve some of the world’s biggest problems.”
And that’s exactly what we’re doing. The institute offers us a collaborative platform for connecting UF researchers with government, industry and other funders to pursue the big questions we’ll need to answer as we explore the Moon, other planets and deep space, and to help humans thrive beyond Earth.
We worked closely with faculty and students in the College of Journalism and Communications to come up with a fitting name for the institute. Astraeus is a Greek mythological figure with dominion over the stars and planets and the name carries on the long tradition in space discovery of using mythical figures like Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and now Artemis to help people connect with the heavens.
The Astraeus Space Institute is a front door for people with a shared curiosity about our vast universe and the
“With Astraeus, UF is making a commitment to promoting a community that is dedicated to space exploration.“
Rob Ferl Director, UF Astraeus Space Institute
skills to study it. The institute brings together UF scholars from an extensive range of disciplines for collaborative research that supports humanity’s ability to explore the universe and creates new partnerships across various sectors essential to space exploration.
UF already has more than 100 faculty conducting over $13 million in federally funded space-related research, such as studying the effects of spaceflight on human biology, searching for life on Mars, understanding how we will use lunar soils, and exploring exoplanets for potential habitability. We believe our research funding can increase dramatically under the institute.
Using the strategic funding, along with continuing support from UF Research, we are seeding more projects
and bringing in new investigators as larger and larger projects are pursued. So far, the Astraeus Space Institute (through the Space Research Initiative) has awarded over $600,000 to faculty across campus.
UF faculty already have many existing partnerships with Space Florida, the Space Life Sciences Laboratory, the United States Space Force and the International Space Station National Laboratory. We see many opportunities to leverage UF’s proximity to Florida’s launch facilities and commercial space industry to advance space science and exploration.
We live in a world where more people will be heading into space than ever before, to do research, to invent, to explore. We want everyone who shares that passion for space to feel that thrill I felt watching my work rocket into the universe, and to have the tools and resources they need to do it a nd, yes, even the opportunity to go to space. And we want every federal agency and company that’s part of exploration to know that our university has the science, the research power, the curiosity, the skills, and especially the people, to do all this fantastic work in space.
$5.9 billion
151,000
Rob Ferl
New mRNA cancer vaccine triggers fierce immune response
In a first-ever human clinical trial of four adult patients, an mRNA cancer vaccine developed at the University of Florida quickly reprogrammed the immune system to attack glioblastoma, the most aggressive and lethal brain tumor.
The results mirror those in 10 pet dog patients suffering from naturally occurring brain tumors whose owners approved of their participation, as they had no other treatment options, as well as results from preclinical mouse models. The breakthrough now will be tested in a Phase 1 pediatric clinical trial for brain cancer.
Reported in the journal Cell , the discovery represents a potential new way to recruit the immune system to fight notoriously treatment-resistant cancers using an iteration of mRNA technology and lipid nanoparticles, similar to COVID-19 vaccines, but with two key differences: use of a patient’s own tumor cells to create a personalized vaccine, and a newly engineered complex delivery mechanism within the vaccine.
“Instead of us injecting single particles, we’re injecting clusters of particles that are wrapping around each other like onions, like a bag full of onions,” said senior author Elias Sayour, a UF Health pediatric oncologist who pioneered the
new vaccine, which like other immunotherapies attempts to “educate” the immune system that a tumor is foreign. “And the reason we’ve done that in the context of cancer is these clusters alert the immune system in a much more profound way than single particles would.”
Among the most impressive findings was how quickly the new method, delivered intravenously, spurred a vigorous immune-system response to reject the tumor, said Sayour, who led the multi-institution research team.
“In less than 48 hours, we could see these tumors shifting from what we refer to as ‘cold’ immune cold, very few immune cells, very silenced immune response to ‘hot,’ very active immune response,” he said. “That was very surprising given how quick this happened, and what that told us is we were able to activate the early part of the immune system very rapidly against these cancers, and that’s critical to unlock the later effects of the immune response.”
Glioblastoma is among the most devastating diagnoses, with median survival around 15 months. Current standard of care involves surgery, radiation and some combination of chemotherapy.
The new publication is the culmination of promising translational results
over seven years of studies, starting in preclinical mouse models and then in a clinical trial of 10 pet dogs that had spontaneously developed terminal brain cancer and had no other treatment options. That trial was conducted with owners’ consent in collaboration with the UF College of Veterinary Medicine. Dogs offer a naturally occurring model for malignant glioma because they are the only other species that develops spontaneous brain tumors with some frequency, said Sheila Carrera-Justiz, a veterinary neurologist at the UF College of Veterinary Medicine who is partnering with Sayour on the clinical trials. Gliomas in dogs are universally terminal, she said.
After treating the pet dogs, Sayour’s team advanced the research to a small clinical trial designed to ensure safety and test feasibility before expanding to a larger trial.
In a cohort of four patients, genetic material called RNA was extracted from each patient’s own surgically removed tumor, and then messenger RNA, or mRNA was amplified and wrapped in the newly designed high-tech packaging of biocompatible lipid nanoparticles, to make tumor cells “look” like a dangerous virus when reinjected into
Dr. Elias Sayour, Chong Zhao and Arnav Barpujari discuss the mRNA cancer vaccine developed at the University of Florida.
Dr. Duane Mitchell, Jeet Patel and Dr. Christina von Roemeling in the Adam Michael Rosen Neurooncology Laboratories. Nate Guidry
the bloodstream and prompt an immune-system response.
“The demonstration that making an mRNA cancer vaccine in this fashion generates similar and strong responses across mice, pet dogs that have developed cancer spontaneously and human patients with brain cancer is a really important finding, because oftentimes we don’t know how well the preclinical studies in animals are going to translate into similar responses in patients,” said Duane Mitchell, director of the UF Clinical and Translational Science Institute and a co-author of the paper. “And while mRNA vaccines and therapeutics are certainly a hot topic since the COVID pandemic, this is a novel and unique way of delivering the mRNA to generate these really significant and rapid immune responses that we’re seeing across animals and humans.”
While too early in the trial to assess the clinical effects of the vaccine, the patients either lived disease-free longer than expected or survived longer than expected.
The 10 pet dogs lived a median of 139 days, compared with a median survival of 30 to 60 days typical for dogs with the condition.
The next step, through support from the Food and Drug Administration and the CureSearch for Children’s Cancer foundation, will be an expanded Phase I clinical trial to include up to 24 adult and pediatric patients to validate the findings. Once an optimal and safe dose is confirmed, an estimated 25 children would participate in Phase 2, said Sayour.
Despite the promising results, the authors said one limitation is continued uncertainty about how best to harness the immune system while minimizing the potential for adverse side effects.
“I am hopeful that this could be a new paradigm for how we treat patients, a new platform technology for how we can modulate the immune system,” said Sayour. Sayour and Mitchell hold patents related to the vaccine which are under option to license by iOncologi Inc., a biotech company born as a “spin out” from UF in which Mitchell holds interest.
Michelle Jaffee
Breakthrough polymer research promises to revolutionize recycling
Ateam of researchers led by Brent Sumerlin, the George B. Butler Professor in the Department of Chemistry, has made a breakthrough with the potential to transform how we recycle plastics. Their innovative approach to working with polymers has led them to develop a new method for recycling that promises to lower the energy requirement without sacrificing the quality of the plastic.
It’s no secret that the U.S. and the Earth at large have a pressing plastic problem. Despite a meteoric rise in usage over the past few decades, only about 10% of our plastic currently ends up getting recycled.
“Our work is a response to the call to action proposed by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals,” said Sumerlin. “New recycling strategies have become imperative to reduce the negative impact of plastic on the environment.”
The plastic recycling process typically involves three key stages: collection, sorting, and reprocessing. Collection of consumer waste relies on individuals placing recyclables into designated bins, which are later picked up by recycling collectors. Subsequently, sorting takes place at recycling plants, where workers organize the collected plastics to sift away the non-plastic materials and group similar plastics together for reprocessing.
Sumerlin’s team targeted the problems often encountered in the final reprocessing stage, where the sorted plastics are typically broken down into smaller pieces before being melted together and molded to create new products. This approach often produces lower-quality recycled plastic, as the polymer molecules that comprise these plastics are broken down into shorter segments.
Instead of this industry-standard thermal reprocessing, Sumerlin’s team explored a different approach called chemical recycling. Their experimental yet prom-
ising strategy induces depolymerization of the polymers so that they revert completely back to the much smaller monomer molecules from which they were originally made. The resulting monomer can then be used to prepare new polymers with similar or better properties than the plastics from which they were derived.
While this approach has already proven to be industrially feasible, Sumerlin’s team of graduate students developed a completely new method that dramatically lowers the energy required to achieve depolymerization. This experimental work was carried out by a team of researchers in Sumerlin’s group and was led by graduate students James Young and Rhys Hughes.
“Not only does this allow recycling of plastics with less energy, but it also enables access to plastics of even better quality,” said Sumerlin.
Polymer research at UF has continued to receive significant attention and funding in recent years. In April, Sumerlin and colleague Austin Evans received a prestigious MURI Grant from the Department of Defense to propel their research in this field. These groundbreaking discoveries may be just the first steps toward unlocking the full potential of polymers. For now, thanks to the efforts of Sumerlin and his team, the future of recycling is ablaze with possibilities, promising a greener and more sustainable tomorrow.
Brian Smith
Brent Sumerlin
Medical AI tool from UF, NVIDIA gets human thumbs-up in first study
Anew artificial intelligence computer program created by researchers at the University of Florida and NVIDIA can generate doctors’ notes so well that two physicians couldn’t tell the difference, according to an early study from both groups.
In this proof-of-concept study, physicians reviewed patient notes some written by actual medical doctors while others were created by the new AI program a nd the physicians identified the correct author only 49% of the time.
A team of 19 researchers from NVIDIA and the University of Florida said their findings, published in the Nature journal npj Digital Medicine, open the door for AI to support health care workers with groundbreaking efficiencies.
The researchers trained supercomputers to generate medical records based on a new model, GatorTronGPT, that functions similarly to ChatGPT. The free versions of GatorTron™ models have more than 430,000 downloads from Hugging Face, an open-source AI website. GatorTron™ models are the site’s only models available for clinical research, according to the article’s lead author Yonghui Wu, an associate professor with the UF College of Medicine’s Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics.
“In health care, everyone is talking about these models. GatorTron™ and GatorTronGPT are unique AI models that can power many aspects of medical research and health care. Yet, they require massive data and extensive computing power to build. We are grateful to have this supercomputer, HiPerGator, from NVIDIA to explore the potential of AI in health care,” Wu said.
For this research, Wu and his colleagues developed a large language model that allows computers to mimic natural human language. These models work well with standard writing or conversations, but medical records bring additional hurdles, such as needing to protect patients’ privacy and being highly technical. Digital medical records cannot be Googled or shared on Wikipedia.
To overcome these obstacles, the researchers stripped UF Health medical records of identifying information from 2 million patients while keeping 82 billion useful medical words. Combining this set with another dataset of 195 billion words, they trained the GatorTronGPT model to analyze the medical data with GPT-3 architecture, or Generative Pretrained Transformer, a form of neural network architecture. That allowed GatorTronGPT to write clinical text similar to medical doctors’ notes.
“This GatorTronGPT model is one of the first major products from UF’s initiative to incorporate AI across the university. We are so pleased with how the partnership with NVIDIA is already bearing fruit and setting the stage for the future of medicine,” said Elizabeth Shenkman, a co-author and chair of the Health Outcomes & Biomedical Informatics department.
Of the many possible uses for a medical GPT, one idea involves replacing the tedium of documentation with notes recorded and transcribed by AI. Wu says that UF has an innovation center that is pursuing a commercial version of the software.
For an AI tool to reach such parity with human writing, programmers spend weeks programming supercomputers with clinical vocabulary and language usage based on billions upon billions of words. One resource providing the necessary clinical data is the OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Network, coordinated at UF and representing many health care systems.
“It’s critical to have such massive amounts of UF Health clinical data not only available but ready for AI. Only a supercomputer could handle such a big dataset of 277 billion words. We are excited to implement GatorTron™ and GatorTronGPT models to real-world health care at UF Health,” said Jiang Bian, a co-author and UF Health’s chief data scientist and chief research information officer.
A cross-section of 14 UF and UF Health faculty contributed to this study, including researchers from Research Computing, Integrated Data Repository Research Services within the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and from departments and divisions within the College of Medicine, including neurosurgery, endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism, cardiovascular medicine, and health outcomes and biomedical informatics.
The study was partially funded by grants from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Aging.
Jim W. Harper
Yonghui Wu
UF researchers’ work leads to federal approval of muscular dystrophy drug
Duchenne muscular dystrophy families, advocates and health care providers recently celebrated a milestone with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the first nonsteroidal drug for the treatment of Duchenne.
In findings published in The Lancet Neurology, a team of investigators led by pharmaceutical company Italfarmaco, in collaboration with the University of Florida, demonstrated that the drug is associated with slower functional decline and decreased fat replacement in muscle.
“This announcement brings a lot of hope and opportunity to patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and their families. It is a very big step forward for the community and provides an effective treatment for families and providers,” said Krista Vandenborne, a distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Physical Therapy at the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions and a member of the phase 3 clinical trial team that evaluated the new drug, marketed as Duvyzat. Vandenborne led the magnetic resonance imaging arm of the new drug study.
Duchenne is a severe form of muscular dystrophy that affects about 1 in 3,500 boys born each year in the United States. It causes muscles to progressively weaken and lose the ability to regenerate after an injury, eventually replacing muscle tissue with fat and collagen. Many children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy may require a wheelchair by adolescence. Heart and respiratory systems are affected as the disease advances.
Duvyzat works by inhibiting an enzyme that leads to muscle damage. The randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled study demonstrated that Duvyzat was associated with 40% less decline in participants’ walking and stair-climbing function. In MRI measurements of thigh muscles conducted by the UF team, the drug showed a 30% reduction in muscle being replaced by fat. It has been approved for children age 6 and older, regardless of which genetic mutation of the disease they may have.
A new and highly effective drug to treat Duchenne represents a significant advance in treatment options for the disease, experts and families say. The current standard of care for Duchenne is the use of steroids, which can delay loss of walking function by two to three years but comes with a host of side effects.
The Duvyzat trial is the first phase 3 clinical trial in Duchenne to use magnetic resonance imaging. UF’s expertise in MR imaging techniques played a
major role in the clinical trial’s design, including the development of participant inclusion criteria based on the UF team’s long-term studies of the progression of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and in key measures of the drug’s effectiveness.
UF researchers led by Vandenborne have pioneered the use of MR biomarkers to capture highly accurate and noninvasive measures of muscle changes in children with Duchenne. Using MR measures in studies like these overcomes the limitations of traditional methods of determining study outcomes, such as measuring a child’s walking speed or other timed functional tests, Vandenborne said.
The UF team is currently contributing MR measurements to a number of clinical trials, including gene therapy studies and additional studies of Duvyzat in patients who have lost the ability to walk. The team also leads a study of the natural progression of Becker muscular dystrophy.
Jill Pease
Imaging expertise at UF has contributed to the successful clinical trial of a new drug to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
AI, lasers help evaluate hurricane forest damage
University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences researchers are using state-of-the-art monitoring equipment that will help them determine how extensively forests are damaged during individual hurricanes.
When hurricanes careen through Florida, they not only damage homes and businesses, they also destroy forests and timber farms. Getting an accurate assessment for how much timber is damaged by hurricanes is essential for environmental management decisions, salvaging logging operations, tree farms’ insurance estimates and climate change studies, but so far, it’s been a vexing puzzle.
Carlos Silva, assistant professor of quantitative forest science in the UF/ IFAS School of Forest, Fisheries and Geomatics Sciences and director of the forest biometrics, remote sensing and AI lab, said the key is to use a combination of remote sensing and artificial intelligence technologies, to create pre- and post-hurricane 3D maps of forests to evaluate forest loss. He uses satellites and lidar a technology that uses lasers to collect data and which stands for Light Detection and Ranging g round equipment to achieve this.
“Hurricanes pose a fundamental challenge for us in Florida,” Silva said. “The traditional way to assess the impact of hurricanes is basically going to the field, establishing plots and measuring trees. But if we’re thinking about large areas, it’s really time-consuming, therefore the traditional way of assessing
impact of hurricanes on forest ecosystems is not efficient.”
“We are in a new era for monitoring forests, thanks to these innovative remote-sensing and AI methods,” he said.
Data help emergency managers and environmental managers make fast, smart decisions in the aftermath of a hurricane, he said. These data help them know which areas were most affected and need help immediately, as well as which would benefit from specialized action at a later time such as where to do salvage logging operations.
Kody Brock, a senior in Silva’s lab, said the maps can help forest managers and landowners alike react quickly to hurricane damage.
“Hurricanes are only going to get worse and more frequent,” she said, “and we realize that in the field of forestry. Those are ecosystems we’re losing.”
Silva and his lab used NASA satellites, specifically the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation satellite and the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite, to scan trees on the ground with a laser pulse that sends back data on the structure of the forest, he said.
Additional data are collected with ground-based lidar scanners attached to all-terrain vehicles and a backpack apparatus to make high-resolution 3D maps of the forest.
The lidar and imagery data from satellites and ground-based sensors are all combined into a web-based mapping platform that shows a comprehensive picture of impacts to forest ecosystems from Hurricane Ian. The map is available online for anyone to use.
The data coming back from these sources includes the weight of trees before and after hurricanes, as well as 3D images of trees that can spot small changes like individual broken tree limbs, he said.
“There was no way to combine data from different sources u ntil now,” Silva said of his lab’s innovations.
Silva’s research is funded by a USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant through the Rapid Response to Extreme Weather Events Across Food and Agricultural Systems program.
Silva’s team also included Inacio Bueno and Caio Hamamura, postdoctoral researchers, and Monique Schlickmann, a Ph.D. student.
An example of a web-based mapping platform for assessing the impacts and recovery of Hurricane Ian on forest ecosystems in Florida. Available online: http://rapidfem4d.silvalab-uf.com
Meredith Bauer
Mosquito-borne disease risk is on the move in the Americas
Mosquito-borne diseases pose a significant global health threat, resulting in over 1 million deaths and infecting up to 700 million people annually. A new study led by University of Florida researchers reveals a disturbing trend that could worsen an already precarious situation.
Published in PLOS Climate, the study’s findings reveal that climate change is causing the mosquito’s potential geographic range to expand and shift. An adaptable type of mosquito, known as a ‘container breeder’ for its ability to breed and lay eggs in urban areas, may thrive in a changing world. This, coupled with globalization, raises the risk of introducing new mosquitoes and pathogens. Areas previously untouched by these insects may now be infiltrated, while regions that had seen dwindling disease may witness a resurgence.
Of particular concern is the potential introduction of the malaria mosquito Anopheles stephensi. Originally a key factor for malaria spread in the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, which has now spread to parts of Africa, this mosquito has evolved into an urban-adapted container breeder, unlike most malaria-spreading mosquitoes. The authors’ maps indicate that conditions in many parts of the Americas are already suitable for its establishment.
The study was led by UF geographer Sadie Ryan and postdoctoral associate Catherine Lippi, experts in vector-borne diseases and transmission and members of UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute.
“It is important to think about the risk of invasion and spread, in addition to quantifying the potential for climate change to shift and alter the risk of existing mosquito-pathogen combinations,” said Ryan.
The researchers also found that the mosquito season will lengthen in many places in the Americas as the climate continues to change, enabling extended breeding periods and an increase in mosquito-borne disease outbreaks. The research shows that regions once considered safe from infections may soon become vulnerable.
“This study reveals the potential impact of multiple arboviral diseases plus potential malaria spread with a novel
vector introduction into the Americas,” said Ryan. “By mapping this in a regional context, we can illustrate which sub-regions and individual countries will face increased risks, and by which mosquito-disease combinations.”
The researchers noted a gap in detailed assessments of the far-reaching impacts of climate change on global public health. The need for a more comprehensive understanding motivated their examination of the intersection of climate change, demographic shifts, and disease transmission in Central and South America.
“It is important to communicate these types of assessments to decision-makers, and by providing comprehensive open research, output maps, and data, they can utilize and implement their own assessments,” said Lippi.
Using inventive geospatial analyses of temperature-driven disease transmission risk combined with climate and demographic projections aligned to the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the researchers highlight the projected risk in the Southwestern South America sub-region. The projections indicate a stark rise in the temperature-driven risk of dengue and Zika transmissions under future climatic scenarios. Brazil faces the most substantial population risk for the introduction of arboviral diseases and malaria.
As the planet warms, the synergy between climate change, population dynamics, and mosquito-borne diseases demands attention. The study underscores the necessity of factoring demographic shifts and climate models into future disease risk assessments, offering insights for shaping effective public health strategies.
The study’s findings share a roadmap for future research and policy development to address the changing landscape of mosquito-borne disease transmission risk. They underscore the need for governments and policymakers worldwide to proactively address the ever-evolving challenges posed by climate change on mosquito-borne diseases.
Lauren Barnett
“It is important to think about the risk of invasion and spread, in addition to quantifying the potential for climate change to shift and alter the risk of existing mosquitopathogen combinations.”
— Sadie Ryan
Anopheles stephensi mosquito
New method for studying ancient gravitational waves
Ateam of physicists that includes a UF professor has developed a method to detect gravity waves with such low frequencies that they could unlock the secrets behind the early phases of mergers between supermassive black holes.
The technique can detect gravitational waves that oscillate just once every thousand years, 100 times slower than any previously measured gravitational waves.
“These are waves reaching us from the farthest corners of the universe, capable of affecting how light travels,” says Jeff Dror, an assistant professor of physics. “Studying these waves from the early universe will help us build a complete picture of our cosmic history, analogous to previous discoveries of the cosmic microwave background.”
Dror and his co-author, University of California, Santa Cruz postdoctoral researcher William DeRocco, published their findings in Physical Review Letters Gravitational waves are akin to ripples in space. Like sound waves or waves
on the ocean, gravitational waves vary in both frequency and amplitude. That information offers insights into their origin and age. Gravitational waves that reach us can be oscillating at extremely low frequencies much lower than those of sound waves detectable with the human ear.
“For reference,” Dror explained, “the frequency of sound waves created by an alligator roar are about 100 billion times higher than this frequency these are very low-pitched waves.”
Their new method of detection is based on analyzing pulsars, neutron stars that emit radio waves at highly regular intervals. Dror hypothesized that searching for gradual slowdown in the arrivals of these pulses could reveal new gravitational waves. By studying existing pulsar data, Dror was able to search for gravitational waves with lower frequencies than ever before, increasing our “hearing range” to frequencies as low as 10 pico -
hertz, 100 times lower than previous efforts that detected nanohertz-level waves.
While gravitational waves with frequencies around a nanohertz have been detected before, not much is known about their origin. There are two theories. The leading idea is that these waves are the result of a merger between two supermassive black holes, which, if true, would give researchers a new way to study the behavior of these giant objects that lie at the heart of every galaxy.
The other main theory is that these waves were created by some sort of cataclysmic event early in the universe’s history. By studying gravitational waves at even lower frequencies, they may be able to differentiate these possibilities.
“Looking ahead, the next step is to analyze newer data sets,” Dror said.
Dror also plans to run simulations on mock data using UF’s HiPerGator supercomputer to further unravel cosmic history.
Brian Smith
UF joins major study of universe’s expansion
The University of Florida is collaborating with nine other universities on the groundbreaking $19.5 million Landolt NASA Space Mission. Approved earlier this year, the mission seeks to place an artificial “star” into Earth’s orbit. By doing so, it aims to tackle several astrophysics challenges, including understanding the speed and acceleration of the universe’s expansion.
Named in honor of the late Louisiana State University astronomer Arlo Landolt, the mission will deploy a calibrated light source in 2029. The artificial star will orbit Earth at a distance of 22,236 miles, providing a reference point alongside real stars to create new stellar brightness catalogs. Its synchronized orbit with Earth’s rotation speed will ensure it remains stationary over the United States during its inaugural year in space.
Central to the mission is the refinement of telescope calibration, which will boost the accuracy of measuring stellar brightness across various celestial phenomena, from nearby stars to distant
supernovae in far-off galaxies. UF’s Jamie Tayar, an assistant professor of astronomy, will serve on the mission team. She believes the mission will set a new standard for understanding star brightness, leading to more precise estimates of their size, scale, and age.
“Lots of our understanding of the universe relies on understanding how bright things are,” Tayar says.
In pursuit of such precision, the team will put a small satellite equipped with multiple lasers into space. These lasers will provide consistent and known brightness levels, overcoming limitations in ground-based telescopes. Positioned near a star, the satellite will precisely determine its absolute brightness, enabling advancements in various scientific fields.
“Goldilocks” regions, where conditions are just right for the existence of water and potentially life.
The goal is to determine whether planets orbiting other stars could have oceans where life may arise and live.
Experts will use the enhanced data from the project to deepen their understanding of stellar evolution and exoplanets, which orbit stars outside our galaxy. Tayar is optimistic the mission will also help identify habitable zones known as
“There are so many big questions in astronomy: How did we get here? Are there other planets like ours? Do aliens exist?” Tayar says. “But those are really hard questions, and so to answer them the measurements have to be really good, and they have to be right.”
Lauren Barnett
Shedding light on the Milky Way’s dark center
Agroundbreaking study led by University of Florida astronomer Adam Ginsburg has shed new light on a mysterious dark region at the center of the Milky Way. The turbulent gas cloud, playfully nicknamed “The Brick” due to its opacity, has sparked lively debates within the scientific community for years.
To decipher its secrets, Ginsburg and his research team, including UF graduate students Desmond Jeff, Savannah Gramze and Alyssa Bulatek, turned to the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST. The implications of their observations are monumental. The findings not only unearth a paradox within the center of our galaxy but indicate a critical need to re-evaluate established theories regarding star formation.
The Brick has been one of the most intriguing and highly studied regions of space, thanks to its unexpectedly low star formation rate. It has challenged scientists’ expectations for decades: As a cloud full of dense gas, it should be ripe for the birth of new stars. However, it demonstrates an unexpectedly low star formation rate.
Using the JWST’s advanced infrared capabilities, the team of researchers peered into The Brick, discovering a substantial presence of frozen carbon monoxide. It harbors a significantly larger amount of carbon monoxide ice than previously anticipated, carrying profound implications for understanding star formation processes.
No one knew how much ice there was in the galactic center.
“Our observations compellingly demonstrate that ice is very prevalent
there, to the point that every observation in the future must take it into account,” Ginsburg says.
Stars typically emerge when gases are cool, and the significant presence of carbon monoxide ice suggests the Brick should be a thriving area for star formation. Yet Ginsburg and the research team found that its structure defies expectations: The gas inside the Brick is warmer than comparable clouds.
These observations challenge the understanding of carbon monoxide abundance in the center of our galaxy and the critical gas-to-dust ratio. Both measures appear to be lower than previously thought, according to the findings.
“With JWST, we’re opening new paths to measure molecules in the ice phase, while previously we were limited to looking at gas,” Ginsburg says. “This new view gives us a more complete look at where molecules exist and how they are transported.”
Engineering professor receives one of NASA’s highest honors
Jacob Chung, a professor with UF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, has received one of NASA’s highest honors. In late June, he was awarded the agency’s Exceptional Public Service Medal. The recognition bestowed by NASA’s Glenn Research Center Awards Office is an acknowledgement of significant contributions to NASA’s mission and purpose.
Using JWST’s specialized filters and photo-editing software, the team was able to remove the stars and show only the filamentary nebula of hot gas that permeates the inner galaxy. The bright regions are where hydrogen is a hot plasma, glowing from the energy from the massive stars. The Brick is the dark region where that glowing plasma is blocked out. Along the edge of The Brick, the glow is bluer: That appearance is caused by the carbon monoxide ice blocking out the red light, letting only the blue through. Traditionally, the observation of carbon monoxide has been limited to emission from gas. Their findings move beyond the limitations of previous measurements, which were confined to around a 100 stars. The new results encompass over 10,000 stars, providing valuable insights into the nature of interstellar ice.
Since the molecules in our solar system today were probably once ice on small dust grains that combined to form planets and comets, the discovery also marks an advance in understanding the origins of the molecules that shape our cosmic surroundings.
Looking ahead, Ginsburg is setting his sights on a more extensive survey of celestial ices.
“We don’t know, for example, the relative amounts of carbon monoxide, water, carbon dioxide and complex molecules,” Ginsburg says. “With spectroscopy, we can measure those and get some sense of how chemistry progresses over time in these clouds.”
Lauren Barnett
Jacob Chung, front left, and crew.
UF joins efforts to boost space manufacturing, business development
It’s all systems go for two new programs that are bringing the University of Florida and other institutions together to support space-related manufacturing and business development.
The Center for Science, Technology, and Advanced Research in Space, or C-STARS, has researchers from UF, Florida A&M University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and Florida Institute of Technology collaborating with industry partners to advance the production of unique medicines, electronics and bioenergy systems in space.
The multisite C-STARS center will also lead workforce development programs to train the next generation of specialists in space technologies, sciences and exploration.
The rapid increase in private sector investment and competition has increased the demand for in-space manufacturing technology and products to drive the new space economy. C-STARS brings together space research and manufacturing
experts to fulfill the demand for space-related data, products and services.
“Space manufacturing provides distinct advantages that cannot be replicated on Earth, enabling the production of novel and potentially higher-quality products,” says Siobhan Malany, an associate professor of pharmacodynamics in the UF College of Pharmacy and center director of C-STARS.
The four universities comprising C-STARS have identified six research areas where they have intersecting experience and expertise. UF is expected to lead the way in health science research, including bioprinting, tissue engineering, and disease modeling, and provide expertise in bioenergy systems and artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, UF experts are also working with other universities on a SpaceEdge Accelerator program. It is tailored to help researchers, entrepreneurs and established businesses develop actionable space strategies. Space-Edge is meant
to open new markets in a global space economy projected to surpass $1 trillion by 2040.
The 12-week program will cover key areas of biomedical innovation from tissue culture to drug formation that can benefit from a space environment or advance human space flight.
“The University of Florida has extensive experience in the field of space sciences, and this program will help other companies and researchers build connections with UF researchers to expand their space research and development portfolios,” says Jamie Foster, a professor of microbiology and cell science at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and UF’s lead researcher for the accelerator.
UF is working with Arizona State University, the University of Central Florida, Space Foundation and Vanderbilt University on the project.
Meredith Bauer and Matt Splett
UF researcher to join upcoming Blue Origin flight
University of Florida Distinguished Professor Rob Ferl will be the first NASA-funded academic researcher to conduct an experiment as part of a commercial space crew on an upcoming mission of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.
Ferl, who is also director of UF’s new Astraeus Space Institute, has spent his career studying how biology responds to spaceflight, progressing from experiments in his Gainesville lab to parabolic flight tests to projects on the space shuttle and the International Space Station.
This project is funded by a grant from NASA’s Flight Opportunities program and the agency’s Biological and Physical Sciences division.
Ferl and colleague Anna-Lisa Paul, also a professor of horticultural sciences, are seeking to understand plant gene expression in microgravity, but most of their experiments have been done by astronauts in space. As Paul puts it, on launches to the space station, astronauts now generally fly separately from science payloads, meaning that science is done “in space” and not “on the way to space.”
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket offers scientists like Ferl the opportunity to conduct science throughout the transition from gravity to microgravity and back.
“As commercial space programs have advanced and access to space has become more available, I always hoped I might be able to conduct our experiments myself in microgravity,” Ferl says. “I feel very grateful for this opportunity. After years, decades even, of working with astronauts to conduct our experiments, it’s an honor to be at the forefront of researchers conducting their own experiments in space.”
Ferl and Paul helped develop experimental devices called Kennedy Space Center Fixation Tubes, or KFTs, that quickly and safely mix test materials (in this case, a model plant called Arabidopsis thaliana) and preservative solutions to “fix” a moment of gene expression so researchers can study what was happening at different stages of the flight. KFTs are often used on the space station to safely and effectively handle solutions in a microgravity environment.
On the New Shepard flight, Ferl will activate KFTs at four different points in the mission: prior to launch, upon
reaching microgravity, at the end of the weightless period as the vehicle begins its descent, and upon landing. New Shepard reaches an apogee above the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space at 62 miles above Earth. On the ground, Paul and members of the UF Space Plants lab team will receive information from the flight that will trigger four identical “control” KFTs. After the mission, the team will bring all the plant samples back to their lab in Gainesville for analysis.
“The successful use of KFTs enables a wide range of biological experiments in suborbital space, as any biology that can fit inside the KFTs can be sampled at any phases of flight chosen, in real time, by the scientist astronaut,” Ferl says.
Joseph Kays
Rob Ferl and Anna-Lisa Paul at Blue Origin headquarters, Merritt Island, Florida
John Jernigan
Perc y
UF space researchers play pivotal roles in major missions
By Doug Bennett
Perseverance Rover next to a Martian rock it sampled in July that may have hosted microbial life billions of years ago.
& L I SA
A trio of satellites nicknamed LISA will one day measure gravitational waves that reveal the origins of the universe with unprecedented range and clarity.
John Conklin and Amy Williams both faced pivotal career moments as young doctoral students.
Conklin knew exactly what he wanted: A chance to work on gravitational waves that began rippling across the universe when black holes collided billions of years ago. More than two decades later, Conklin still speaks avidly about precisely measuring the ancient, unseeable forces that shaped the universe.
Williams had a burgeoning passion for astrobiology and geobiology research, pivoting from earth science as her academic career progressed. In early 2009, her research options were starkly different: Live in Antarctica for three months and dive in frigid lakes to study microbial growth. Or she could work on Mars research.
Those choices ultimately led Conklin and Williams to the University of Florida. Their research work vastly divergent but crucial to understanding the origins of the universe and its biology is now being further harnessed by UF’s Astraeus Space Institute. The institute was created earlier this year by former UF President Ben Sasse to spark intensive scientific collaboration and innovative space research.
For Williams, the choice of research paths came from Dawn Sumner, a geobiologist at the University of California, Davis and co-investigator on the Mars rover Curiosity.
It didn’t take Williams long to decide.
“I don’t like the cold and I don’t actually have to fly to Mars,” says Williams, a UF astrobiologist and associate professor of geology.
That decision paid off almost immediately, giving her a role on the NASA team that uses Curiosity to study rock layers and search for habitable environments on Mars. Since 2020, she’s also been a participating scientist for the Perseverance rover one of just a handful of experts to fill that role on both Mars missions.
Perseverance has spent more than three years combing Jezero crater, a site chosen because it once held a large river delta that flowed into an ancient lake. The rovers’ work is essential to two larger, elemental questions being pursued by Williams: Could there have been past life on Mars? Is there life there today, perhaps somewhere underground?
John Conklin holds a replica of a gold-platinum test mass. The free-floating cubes will be used aboard the three LISA spacecraft to study the nature of gravitational waves in space.
David Schlenker
Sites on Mars that have water, organic carbon and minerals are fertile ground for seeking evidence of past life. Perseverance is busy drilling samples that will provide important context about conditions on Mars that gave rise to particular types of rocks.
“We’re actually going to be able to determine when water was flowing on the surface of Mars something no one knows with precision right now,” Williams says.
Perseverance is carrying SHERLOC, a NASA-built instrument that detects minerals and organic matter in Jezero crater’s rocks. It uses cameras, a spectrometer and a laser to scan for minerals and compounds that may hold evidence of past microbial life. In 2022, a Perseverance team that includes Williams analyzed and stored rock samples that were altered by water, giving further evidence of a wet past on Mars. That same year, the rover found signs of organic molecules. Whether those molecules came from geological processes or ancient life hasn’t been determined.
Rocks on the red planet may also hold other tantalizing clues, Williams says. Bacteria and many other microbes can use chemical energy from rocks. An electron from one of those rocks could have been enough to spark life-giving metabolism in a microbe.
“That’s why we look for organic carbon, water and minerals,” Williams says. “They’re the requirements for life as we know it.”
Combing Mars rocks for signs of extinct life is exceptionally painstaking. Instead of seashells or bones, Williams and her collaborators search for fossilized bacteria at b est a thin mat of microbes embedded in rock.
Amy Williams
John Jernigan
“We don’t have any evidence for life right now but we have evidence for where life would want to live if it had been there,” Williams says. “My hope would be to find signs of microbial life, something akin to bacteria on Earth.”
Listening To The Universe
While Williams focuses on Mars, Conklin concentrates on developing technology to detect the faint hum of low-frequency gravitational waves. The waves are a time capsule of sorts, giving scientists unique insights into the ancient, violent collisions of stars and black holes that have helped to define the universe.
For Conklin, that means never forgetting when he fell in love with LISA.
In the mid-2000s, Conklin was pursuing a doctoral degree at Stanford University. His focus was on Gravity Probe B, a satellite-based NASA mission measuring how space and time are “warped” by the Earth’s presence. Meanwhile, other Stanford scientists were working on the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. LISA’s trio of satellites will one day trail in the Earth’s wake as it circles the sun, measuring gravitational waves that reveal the origins of the universe with unprecedented range and clarity.
Since the two Stanford projects had some overlapping technology, Conklin got to learn more about LISA a nd he was hooked.
“I just fell in love with the mission not only the science, which I think is amazing but the technology and engineering of it,” says Conklin, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor.
Almost 20 years later, LISA is still a big part of Conklin’s work. The European Space Agency, with major contributions from NASA, plans to launch LISA in 2035, when its trio of cartwheeling, synchronized spacecraft will follow Earth’s orbit by tens of millions of miles. Its job: Detect the subtle frequency shifts that reveal how galaxies form and black holes merge. From its position in space, LISA will detect a different range of gravitational waves than terrestrial equipment. It’s designed to capture the slower, lower frequency gravitational waves that elude current machinery.
“If LISA operates successfully, we’ll basically be listening to the whole universe at once,” Conklin says.
Conklin’s work involves a key piece of equipment: Without it, LISA goes deaf or doesn’t function optimally.
At about 10 pounds and the size of a shoebox, Conklin’s charge management device, or CMD, houses ultraviolet LEDs and fiber optic cables that deliver light to a test-mass sensor. The CMD blocks disruptive electrical charges on free-floating gold and platinum alloy cubes inside LISA, assuring it can detect gravitational waves.
“If LISA operates successfully, we’ll basically be listening to the whole universe at once.”
— John Conklin
For Conklin, building and testing eight bespoke CMDs six for space flight and two spares means focusing on every last detail. To function properly, LISA’s gold-platinum test masses must operate free of any external forces. That means finding a way to electrically ground the test masses without touching them. On Earth, grounding would be as simple as attaching a wire. In space, even the smallest wire would exert undesired force on LISA’s test masses. Conklin’s solution is to use ultraviolet light for electrical grounding.
His team’s devices also have to meet many other challenges. The CMDs
Rendering of the GRATTIS spacecraft in Earth orbit
must be optimally sized for spacecraft but durable enough to withstand a long mission life. Their ultraviolet LEDs have only existed for about 20 years and haven’t yet been certified for space flight.
Conklin’s lab is a veritable torture chamber for his CMD. A thermal vacuum chamber simulates conditions in space. His lab has bombarded the device with gamma rays and proton beams. It’s been exposed to heat, chilled to at least -22 degrees Fahrenheit and shaken to simulate the forces of a rocket launch.
So far, so good.
“We have shown they’re inherently radiation hard and capable of surviving other conditions,” Conklin says.
NASA will do a detailed review of the device’s design and test results this fall a determination that the prototype works as intended. Conklin’s current $12.6 million NASA contract for technology and prototype development runs through 2025. At the agency’s discretion, a flight contract could begin in 2025 or 2026, Conklin says.
Revolutionary Knowledge
Using spacecraft to detect the gravitational waves that ripple through space will give scientists unprecedented insights into universe-shaping events and the number of black holes, Conklin noted.
“It tells us about galaxy formation because we’re pretty confident that every galaxy, including our own, has a black hole. It’s telling us how the universe came to be the way it is,” Conklin said.
Still, not all of Conklin’s work is focused on the heavens. It turns out the same type of instruments that focus on deep space can also be aimed at Earth. Spacecraft that are trained on the Earth’s gravitational field can reveal changes in ice levels at the poles. By measuring gravity, scientists can tell the volume of ice that has melted and flowed into an ocean. That, Conklin says, is far more valuable than a static image of an ice sheet. Likewise, a pair of spacecraft can be focused on water resources. A tiny wobble in the distance between the spacecraft is enough to determine water levels in Florida’s aquifers or California’s farm-rich Central Valley.
“It’s about climate change with the melting of the Arctic and Antarctic,” Conklin says. “But it can also tell us about drought conditions that are important for agriculture.”
Earlier this year, Conklin won a $12 million NASA grant to lead a team of UF researchers studying groundbreaking ways to detect changes in Earth’s structure. Sensors that measure minute gravitational changes from space will be used to monitor the movement of water, ice and the Earth’s tectonic plates.
Technology flying on the Gravitational Reference Advanced Technology Test In Space, or GRATTIS, is vital for assessing groundwater supplies, tracking droughts and understanding how sea levels are affected by melting ice sheets, according to Conklin.
Conklin will spend the next few years finalizing the sensor technology for GRATTIS and integrating it into the spacecraft. A SpaceX rocket is expected to carry the device into orbit around 2027.
More broadly, Conklin says the Astraeus Space Institute will enhance UF’s space research by supporting faculty
Artist’s interpretation of the triangular laser link between the three LISA spacecraft
“You’re getting a window into the infancy of a planet when you see rocks of that age that are no longer preserved in most places on Earth.”
— Amy Williams
members’ pursuit of large space mission proposals to NASA and other federal agencies. UF also plans to form a space mission operations center that can operate rovers on Mars, handle experiments on the International Space Station and control free-flying spacecraft.
Conklin, an assistant director of the institute, says the chance to push the boundaries of space research is especially invigorating. Determined astrophysicists around the world are testing Albert Einstein’s theories to their limits. Other space scientists are harnessing technology to better track our changing planet.
“With this job, I’m always working and I’m always on vacation because I really can’t tell the difference between the two,” he says. “The technology that we use and develop is really cool but the science is also extremely important.”
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover accomplished its first drill into Martian bedrock in February 2013. In this January 2013 photo, the robotic arm and drill are shown being deployed on the surface of the John Klein outcrop with the eventual destination, Mount Sharp, in the background. (Top)
The Curiosity rover used two cameras to create this panoramic image in front of Mont Mercou, a rock outcrop that stands 20 feet high. (Middle)
This enhanced photo mosaic, taken by the Perseverance rover, shows a butte within Jezero crater. The butte provides evidence that an ancient river flowed into a lake within the crater. (Bottom)
From Mars To Earth
Someday, NASA and the European Space Agency hope to bring dozens of titanium tubes filled with Mars soil and rock-core samples to Earth. For the Mars Sample Return to happen, a vehicle that can launch from the red planet and connect to an orbiter is needed. NASA has begun seeking private proposals for the return trip after its own estimate stretched to $11 billion with a timeline of about 16 years.
Williams lights up at the prospect of analyzing Mars rocks on Earth. She likens the samples to a scientific jewelry box small, precious and information-dense rocks that give important geologic nuances about the planet’s past.
A 2023 analysis of Perseverance rock samples by Williams and her colleagues suggested there may be a diverse pool of organic molecules among two rock formations in Jezero crater. It’s also possible the molecules were deposited by groundwater moving through the rocks billions of years ago.
Still, Perseverance’s instruments aren’t sophisticated enough to discern the exact origins of organic carbon on Mars. Bringing rock samples to Earth would vastly improve the accuracy and range of scientific testing that can be done, Williams says.
Terrestrial testing would help Williams and others to better pinpoint when water was flowing in Jezero crater. Right now, that time frame covers about 1 billion years something that could be narrowed considerably with earthbound testing of Mars rocks.
“You’re getting a window into the infancy of a planet when you see rocks of that age that are no longer preserved in most places on Earth,” Williams says.
For Williams, decoding the geologic clues of Mars has also meant scouring parts of the earth. In 2021, she was the lead investigator on a UF-funded project that uses terrestrial sites to develop new technologies that better detect organic molecules on Mars.
Williams’ work has taken her to locations that mimic at least one environmental aspect of Mars. In Iceland, she is working to understand how certain organisms and their biosignatures respond to the repeated wet-dry cycles that once took place on Mars. Williams has also probed a Northern California mountain range, studying how microbes are preserved in the iron oxide minerals of an acidic, salty environment a s they might be on Mars.
From her roles with two Mars rovers, Williams can also testify to the power of collaboration. It’s why she sees the Astraeus Space Institute as a special opportunity to boost interactions between colleges and utilize UF’s engineering expertise to build equipment that helps to answer crucial scientific questions.
“The institute is going to provide a new venue for synergistic work. It presents opportunities to work with other experts across campus like nowhere else,” Williams says.
It’s that optimism and a sense of wonder that propels her after more than a decade of space research.
“I get to wake up every day and see brand-new pictures of Mars that no human has ever experienced,” Williams says. “Hopefully one day, astronauts will see Mars in person. Until then, knowing that I’m helping to discover something that’s never been broached by humanity is a really extraordinary motivator.”
John Conklin
Don D. and Ruth S. Eckis Professor Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering jwconklin@ufl.edu
Amy Williams
Associate Professor of Geological Sciences amywilliams1@ufl.edu
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity captured this composite image, which looks toward the higher regions of Mount Sharp, on Sept. 9, 2015. The red Martian sky has been color adjusted to blue to make the image look more “Earth-like”
A Harsh Environment Making space more hospitable, for people and machines
By Doug Bennett
While people on Earth are thinking about self-driving cars, Christopher “Chrispy” Petersen is focused on self-driving satellites.
“A satellite that nudges itself in the right direction or performs some aspect of self-repair lets people in the control room focus on other, important mission-oriented tasks,” he says. Petersen, an assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, loves pushing the limits of satellite capabilities.
“If we already have all this real-time data from sensors and fine manipulation via actuators, can we use them in a novel way? Can we chain together our algorithms to do the mission in a unique and unconventional way?” he asks.
That pioneering mindset comes naturally to Petersen and other UF space researchers. It’s led them to forge paths in brain research, muscle atrophy and space manufacturing. Persistence and bootstrapping also help. As a prime example, Petersen used Lego robots early in his career to do crucial satellite simulations on a shoestring budget.
Rachael Seidler has spent years studying spaceflight’s effects on the human brain and body. It started with a random but timely email nearly three decades ago.
Seidler was a graduate student at Arizona State University in the mid-1990s, researching sensory conflict that leads to motion sickness and other problems. One day, she learned that NASA offered graduate student fellowships.
It was the ultimate cold pitch, reaching out to a scientist at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Seidler didn’t know the researcher but she had some ideas. He agreed to a chat.
“I got the fellowship and collaborated with the same person and same team in his lab for 25 years. It ended up just being a great connection with an awesome mentor,” Seidler says.
After postdoctoral work in Minnesota and a professorship in Michigan, she joined UF as a professor of applied physiology and kinesiology in 2017.
Even now, Seidler admits that the factual and historical minutiae of space flight don’t hold much interest. For her, it’s an “incredible opportunity” to study neuroplasticity t he brain’s ability to adapt to changes and experiences. It’s also a way to better understand and help counteract the many physical effects of space travel and microgravity.
“A lot of our physiology and anatomy has evolved to either work with gravity or against it. I’m always interested in basic science questions but realize I have to fit that into helping NASA solve very applied problems,” she says.
As lengthy missions become more common and space agencies consider sending humans to Mars, Seidler works at understanding and mitigating the health hazards of spaceflight, especially those caused by microgravity.
In microgravity, body fluids shift toward the head. The brain also moves upwards, pressing against the top of the skull. That affects the part of the brain that controls movement of the lower body. Meanwhile, the lower body muscles aren’t used for standing and walking in microgravity because astronauts are floating.
Work by Seidler and others has shown that fluid-filled spaces in the middle of the brain known as ventricles expand in space, potentially contributing to a diminished vision condition known as Spaceflight Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome. More study is needed to determine how shifts in body fluid and brain position affect astronauts’ health and performance, Seidler says.
She has also shown how astronauts who are adapting to low gravity undergo brain changes that resemble accelerated aging. Most of those changes involve degraded white matter in the brain, which is crucial for quick and efficient brain signaling. Astronauts with more affected white matter have the most problems with balance and mobility after returning to Earth, Seidler has found.
“I think it’s really important to understand the potential boundaries for adaptation and neuroplasticity in the healthy brain.”
— Rachael Seidler
That also underscores another challenge she is working to unravel: Astronauts all respond differently to the rigors of space. Some of them might have significant motion sickness while others have none. Some astronauts struggle to stand up and walk a straight line when they first return to Earth while others don’t.
To better understand those effects, Seidler recently started a NASA-funded study tracking space crews for five years after their flights. An array of brain scans, behavioral measures and eye evaluations are meant to reveal brain and eye changes and the long-term health effects of space travel.
For Seidler, helping astronauts be safe and highly functional in space is important. So, too, is more knowledge of the brain’s resilience. A fuller understanding of expanding brain ventricles in astronauts could lead to better treatments for a similar but
Rachael Seidler
naturally occurring disorder in the population at large, she says.
More broadly, Seidler says microgravity is a good analog for dealing with medical problems on Earth. The inner ear balance sensor is impacted not just by microgravity but also by normal aging, tumors and other conditions.
“Truly understanding how we compensate when one or more sensory systems are dysfunctional and looking for ways to accelerate that compensation can be enormously beneficial for people on Earth,” she says.
Over the years, Seidler has learned what really drives her a nd it’s not just solving the problems of spaceflight.
“I think it’s really important to understand the potential boundaries for adaptation and neuroplasticity in the healthy brain,” she says.
John Jernigan
Fluid shifts in the brain with spaceflight vary depending on how many times someone has been to space previously.
Satellite Precision
Ask Chrispy Petersen about controlling and optimizing satellites and he gives a simple but powerful example.
“You can’t put a laptop into space,” Petersen says.
For Petersen, a typical computer’s limitations reveal the many difficulties that come with keeping satellites on track and bringing them into proximity. He ticks off some of the issues: Radiation in space would fry a laptop within six months. Computer processors on satellites are a decade behind the ones on Earth. Even simply having enough electrical power to complete complex, automated tasks in orbit is an issue.
To solve these challenges, his lab optimizes satellite operations, hardware and software amid extreme mission and safety constraints. That means docking
a satellite while minimizing fuel use, coaxing a satellite into a particular orbit as quickly as possible or autonomously exploring unknown regions around the moon. Bringing multiple satellites close together to complete these goals is a big complication.
Ultimately, Petersen says, those solutions involve a mix of speed, safety and reliability a ll of which needs to be optimized for peak performance. Much of the work in his Spacecraft Technology and Research Laboratory focuses on docking or operating satellites in close quarters about 300 miles apart. To do that, he creates algorithms that let satellites produce safe, desired results within time frames needed to complete the mission.
Space flight control has long been a lure for Petersen, ramping up when he was a graduate student in flight dynamics at the University of Michigan in the
mid-2010s. Shortly after graduating, he was developing software and determining orbital plans for satellites from the operations floor at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One of his favorite missions was developing advanced guidance algorithms for Mycroft, an experimental spacecraft launched by the Air Force in 2018 to enhance space object understanding and navigation capabilities. The project also investigated automated control mechanisms used for flight safety and explored methods for enhancing space situational awareness.
Not all of his Air Force work involved fancy equipment and multimillion-dollar spacecraft. In 2013, Petersen was working on a new, efficient algorithm. It needed proving on a test harness but money was tight. Petersen and his co-workers turned to Lego Mindstorms, the small,
John Jernigan
Chrispy Petersen holds an NVIDIA Jetson Orin, a radiation-tolerant processor that enables performance computing in the harsh space environment.
“What I get out of my work is a sense of relief that the overall mission has been accomplished. I’m not the most important thing on a satellite team. It’s the science. It’s the mission. If I can make that happen, then that’s the best feeling.”
— Chrispy Petersen
The Air Force Research Lab’s EAGLE satellite carried multiple experiments including the free-flying Mycroft satellite. Petersen helped to develop algorithms that enabled efficient, safe satellite movement.
programmable robotic kits for children. He used the Lego kits to emulate satellite motions a simple proof of concept that actual satellites could avoid each other in space. That success led to better robots, larger test facilities and more definitive scientific validation.
“I got to say that I played with Legos for the Department of Defense. Who can say that?” Petersen says.
Petersen’s research carries big implications and even bigger goals: A nimble, carefully guided spacecraft that can fix or refuel satellites without humans. Space equipment that’s too large to launch intact can be built in orbit – but only if the satellites doing the assembly can work meters apart and in tandem. Satellites can also benefit from in-flight upgrades to graphics cards or rocket engines. Forty percent of satellites have a failure in their first year of operation. After that, problems become even more routine.
“If we can fix those failures in orbit, the life of a spacecraft can be significantly extended,” Petersen says.
Petersen’s advances in precise guidance and satellite proximity are key to making that happen. That includes evolving robotic arms to better control what happens during satellite docking and repair missions. He’s also looking at ways to increase the life of spacecraft by designing modular “plug and play” components. With this comes another effort focused on making satellites less vulnerable to failure and hacking. That means satellites with multiple parts from different vendors can be operated with fewer concerns about unexpected events.
As satellites get more autonomous, mission-control workers can focus on interpreting incoming data, giving higher-order directives and other human-oriented tasks, Petersen says.
“What I get out of my work is a sense of relief that the overall mission has been accomplished,” he says. “I’m not the most important thing on a satellite team. It’s the science. It’s the mission. If I can make that happen, then that’s the best feeling.”
Strengthening Muscle Research
When Siobhan Malany came to Florida in late 2010, space research wasn’t even on her mind. Then, her innate curiosity kicked in.
At the time, Malany was leading a drug discovery team at a non-profit medical research institute in Orlando. When she got a chance to view a space shuttle Endeavour launch, she jumped at the opportunity. That visit helped Malany connect with scientists who were doing crystallography experiments in space. Next came some networking with other researchers through Space Florida, the state’s aerospace economic development agency.
“That was really the introduction to conducting projects in space,” says Malany, an associate professor of pharmacodynamics in the College of Pharmacy.
Her first foray into space research for Space Florida was done on less than a shoestring. Malany convinced some companies to donate materials, then wedged her protein-binding experiment into a 4-inch box that was flown aboard the International Space Station. The experiment showed how a key interaction between vitamins and proteins could be blocked by a drug. That gives researchers the ability to perform drug discovery experiments on common instruments on the ground and in space. By comparing the results, they can determine the effects of microgravity on biological systems.
From that humble beginning, Malany went on to develop a skeletal muscle “lab on a chip” system that was launched to the International Space Station in 2018. Since then, she has sent experiments on three SpaceX resupply missions to the station. The automated cell culturing system is used to study muscle physiology on a human tissue level. Hence, the devices are also called “tissue chips.” The hope is that tissue chips that are grown in three dimensions like real tissue could reduce reliance on animal studies to more accurately model disorders such as sarcopenia, an age-related muscle disease for which there are currently no federally-approved drugs.
For astronauts, muscle atrophy can be staggering. Studies have shown they lose up to 20% of muscle mass during missions of just two weeks up to 10 times the amount an early middle-aged person on Earth sheds in a year. Studying muscle cells in space is important for astronauts and earthlings alike, Malany says. Her “lab on a chip” exposes human muscle biopsy cells from younger and older adult donors to all the variables of space flight while being electrically stimulated to mimic exercise. In 2023, Malany and her collaborators discovered gene expression changes in muscle tissue that was sent into orbit, underscoring the value of space-based tissue research for identifying age-related muscle loss earlier and developing new remedies for sarcopenia. Muscle tissue from younger donors was more
sensitive to the space environment and showed greater changes in gene expression compared with older donors, they concluded. That’s because microgravity speeds up changes to loss of muscle mass and power, giving more information about diseases and aging processes much sooner than terrestrial research. The current cost to treat sarcopenia in the United States is about $40 billion a year.
“That could help us better understand the progression of aging in a shorter period of time a nd how to address it on Earth,” Malany says.
On the flip side, astronauts need to live and work in space on longer missions. The “lab on a chip” will be an important platform for studying muscle performance and health in the extreme space environment, she says.
One of her other projects is evaluating whether a compound found in tomato stems and leaves can restore age-related muscle loss like it has been shown to do in studies using mice. In late 2022, 16 samples of skeletal muscle were packed inside Malany’s shoebox-sized, automated CubeLab laboratory. Once aboard the ISS, the muscle cells from the same younger and older people were electrically stimulated and exposed to the tomato compound.
While that analysis is still under way, Malany believes the floating laboratory of space holds promise that goes well beyond muscle cells.
John Jernigan
“I am motivated by what space can tell us about how our cells age and the opportunity to discover a new generation of medicines.”
Siobhan Malany
A study assessing astronauts’ liver metabolism was recently funded by UF’s new Astraeus Space Institute and awarded to Maddalena Parafati, a research assistant professor in Malany’s laboratory. Stem cells from astronauts’ blood taken before and after a space mission will be converted into one type of liver cell and analyzed. That approach should provide a trove of data about liver function in space without doing biopsies, Malany says.
Malany also now leads the In-Space Biomanufacturing for Human Health
Human muscle cells fuse to form the basic unit of a fiber responsible for muscle contraction called sarcomere (shown in red). The cell nuclei are stained blue. (Above)
Human muscle fibers (dark grey) are anchored around a silicon-based pillar (white) on one end. The other end is also anchored to form a rubber-band like structure. (Left)
A tissue chip uses electrodes to deliver electrical stimulation to muscle tissue and provide contact to a liquid that delivers nutrients to the cells. (Below)
Innovation Hub that was formed late last year through former UF President Ben Sasse’s strategic initiative program. The hub synergizes research in the College of Pharmacy; the departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Microbiology and Cell Science, and Biomedical Engineering; the Genetics Institute; and the Space Life Sciences Lab. The intent is to advance in-space biomanufacturing for cell-based products and bioproducts used for preclinical research. It’s particularly exciting, Malany says, because the hub is focusing on shorter-term projects that could have more immediate impacts and potential commercial benefits.
The consortium includes projects studying microgravity’s effect on cardiovascular cell function, which could lead to targeted medications used in space and on Earth. Other research is assessing whether yeast cells can be programmed to make in-flight remedies for astronauts with blood sugar issues and sleep deprivation.
Several faculty are also investigating small particles known as extracellular vesicles, which cancer cells and microbes release naturally to communicate with other cells. If the particles are found to grow and assemble better in space, that might improve their capacity as “nanomedicines” to deliver biological information to cells and tissues.
Those kinds of discoveries are crucial to extending humans’ reach in space, Malany says.
“Mars missions and other long-term explorations are when you need to be producing your own vitamins or the building blocks for other chemicals and drugs,” she says.
Siobhan Malany
Associate Professor of Pharmacodynamics smalany@ufl.edu
Christopher “Chrispy” Petersen
Assistant Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering c.petersen1@ufl.edu
Rachael Seidler
Professor of Applied Physiology & Kinesiology rachaelseidler@ufl.edu
John Jernigan
Mission Control Mission Control
UF leads the way at the Space Life Sciences Lab
By Joseph Kays
Andrew Schuerger and Jamie Foster have watched hundreds of rockets launch from the Kennedy Space Center over the course of their two decades at the Space Life Sciences Laboratory, located just 8 miles from the launch pad.
“I try to go out to see absolutely every rocket launch. It’s thrilling, emotionally and psychologically,” says Schuerger, a professor of plant pathology. Foster, a professor of microbiology and cell science, says she’ll never forget the first time one of her experiments went to space in 2011.
“It was on the space shuttle and there was nothing like going out there, feeling that sound, that vibration coming at you and knowing that you are helping the space program go a little bit forward,” she says.
UF has been the university anchor at the lab, known as the SLSL, for over 20 years, led by Schuerger, Foster and the late Wayne Nicholson. Recently, they were joined by Nils Averesch, an assistant professor of space biology.
“The SLSL is a hotspot for interactions between government, industry and university partners,” says Foster. “It’s a really unique opportunity to take advantage of the Kennedy Space Center being right next door.”
Photography by John Jernigan
Mars in a Box
Schuerger has created a little bit of Mars in his lab.
Inside a stainless steel device about the size of a washing machine called the Planetary Atmospheric Chamber, Schuerger is able to mimic the pressure, UV radiation, temperature, gas and dust conditions organisms from Earth microbes, plants and astronauts a re likely to experience on Mars. His goal: Prevent humans from contaminating Mars and prevent anything on Mars from contaminating Earth.
NASA has a whole division devoted to these same goals. The Office of Planetary Protection is responsible for “protecting solar system bodies from contamination by Earth life and protecting Earth from possible life forms that may be returned from other solar system bodies.”
“The main objectives are to carefully control forward contamination of other worlds by terrestrial organisms and organic materials carried by spacecraft in order to guarantee the integrity of the search and study of extraterrestrial life, if it exists,” according to the NASA website. “Also, to rigorously preclude backward contamination of Earth by extraterrestrial life or bioactive molecules in returned samples from habitable worlds in order to prevent potentially harmful consequences for humans and the Earth’s biosphere.”
Schuerger says experiments exposing terrestrial microbes to
Mars-like conditions in the Planetary Atmospheric Chamber indicate the planet’s harsh environment would sterilize them within hours if directly exposed to solar ultraviolet radiation, which is 1,000 times stronger than on Earth.
“I’m not that concerned we’re going to ruin the surface of Mars,” he says. “I think the more intriguing issue is how do we prevent bringing stuff back that might have a Martian microbiota on it, because we don’t know if one exists, and if it does, we don’t know its characteristics.”
Schuerger is also using his expertise in plant pathology to help build bioregenerative life support systems, or BLSS, that will be needed for long-duration space missions in which astronauts will not be able to carry with them all the water and food stocks they will need to survive for long missions.
“As we travel farther beyond low Earth orbit, the increased cost of resupply ... w ill necessitate life support systems with higher efficiency and autonomy than the ... systems in use today,” Schuerger and a team of scientists wrote in a recent white paper for NASA. “Just as on Earth, living organisms can provide multiple life support functions in space by recycling waste products to generate oxygen, water and food.
“But, the space environment differs from the terrestrial one, with fractional gravity or microgravity, reduced atmospheric pressure, elevated radiation, and biological isolation,” Schuerger and his colleagues argue, so it is imperative that mission planners understand potential risks to these life support systems.
Andrew Schuerger monitors samples inside the Planetary Atmospheric Chamber he developed to mimic conditions on Mars.
“Wherever plants go, diseases are sure to follow, so plant disease development has a profound impact on the future of human exploration of the solar system.”
—Andrew Schuerger
Schuerger’s first career as the senior plant pathologist at The Land Pavilion at Epcot makes him uniquely qualified to address this challenge for NASA.
“We were growing over 40 food crops hydroponically at The Land, and it was set up in a way that could theoretically be extrapolated to be a ground proxy for a space-based BLSS habitat on the Moon or on Mars,” he says. “So, in essence, I spent the first 18 years of my career in a prototype of a BLSS habitat that was similar to what might be developed for human colonization of various planetary bodies in our solar system.”
Schuerger’s team is developing a flight experiment scheduled to go to the International Space Station in the next two years that will look at how plants deal with microbial diseases in space.
“Wherever plants go, diseases are sure to follow, so plant disease development has a profound impact on the future of human exploration of the solar system,” Schuerger says. “If disease resistance is ‘normal’ in space-based BLSS modules, the use of crops for food, oxygen and water recycling will be a viable option for crewed habitats on the Moon and Mars. If plant diseases develop more quickly in space than on Earth, new and unique plant production protocols may have to be developed.”
Andrew Schuerger holds squash plants infected with powdery mildew in preparation for an upcoming experiment on the International Space Station.
“Microbes could play a crucial role in helping astronauts cope with the stresses of space travel.”
—Jamie Foster
Squid Game
Foster has spent her career trying to understand how our microbiome t he bacteria, fungi and viruses that naturally live on and in our bodies impacts health, and how space impacts the microbiome.
“The microbiome is essentially telling your body what to do at the molecular level,” Foster says. “Sometimes a bacterial signal in one part of your body, say the digestive system, can promote your health, but change the context of that signal and move it to the heart or the bloodstream, and it could potentially cause damage or disease.”
Foster uses a unique symbiotic relationship between the tiny bobtail squid and a bioluminescent bacteria called Vibrio fischeri as a model for understanding microbial interactions.
“What makes this squid so unique is that it’s born with a special light organ, and as Vibrio fischeri colonizes the squid it allows the squid to glow in the dark,” Foster says. “Since Vibrio fischeri is the only bacterium that interacts with the squid, we can control how we put the animals and the bacteria together. So, instead of trying to understand thousands of different bacterial species interacting, in this squid there’s just one host and one bacteria, and they glow, so that makes the interactions much easier to follow.”
After years of developing and testing microgravity experiments using the squid in her lab, in 2021
A student holds an adult bobtail squid in Jamie
Foster’s lab.
Jamie Foster
Foster sent a NASA-funded experiment to the International Space Station called UMAMI for Understanding of Microgravity on Animal-Microbe Interactions.
“We sent the squid to space without any microbes at all, then colonized half of the animals with the Vibrio fischeri to see how that conversation initiated and unfurled in the space environment,” Foster says. “When the animals got to space, they were all showing signs of stress. But, the animals that received their microbes had their stress levels decrease almost completely after about 12 hours. In the animals that never received their microbes, their stress levels stayed high.”
The experiment provides insights into how the space environment affects the communication between animals and microbes, Foster says. It also could have important implications for longterm space travel, where astronauts will be living in a microgravity environment for extended periods.
“Microbes could play a crucial role in helping astronauts cope with the stresses of space travel,” she says. “It also contributes to our understanding of how microbes interact with their hosts in different environments, which could have applications in various fields, including medicine and agriculture.”
Bioplastics
While most of today’s plastics use hydrocarbons like petroleum as their feedstock, Averesch is focused on ways to manufacture “bioplastics,” which use the very carbon dioxide we have too much of as a feedstock.
“Our modern society is based on making products based on petrochemistry, which we have all seen by now is not very sustainable,” he says. “Biotechnology might be how we can step away from fossil fuels. After all, the ability to convert inorganic carbon into chemicals is what life as we know it is founded on.”
Initially, Averesch wasn’t really focused on the implications of his research to space exploration, then he talked to some colleagues at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California.
“I never really considered that biotechnology could be relevant to space exploration, but NASA really liked the idea of making high-performance materials through biology,” he says.
It turns out, Mars explorers are going to need ways to repair and eventually build things from “in situ” resources.
“If we’re going to go to Mars, we can’t bring everything we need with us. We’ll need to be able to manufacture stuff on the way and when we get there, and we’ll have to use the resources we find there,” Averesch says. “Mars has carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is the basic feedstock every biological organism on Earth has been using for millions of years.”
Averesch says he has made progress in developing bioplastics similar to existing synthetic polyesters that could have plenty of uses on Mars.
“I think the biggest near-term opportunity is in small replacement parts that could be manufactured using 3D printing, but also composites of resin with regolith could provide greater independence, as well as resilience for habitation, for example with a permanent foothold on the Moon,” he says.
“Eventually, settlements off-Earth may also have the need, as well as the ability, to expand autonomously across our solar system and beyond. Being able to produce materials for manufacturing is a critical factor to enable this.”
While Schuerger, Foster and Averesch are addressing different pieces of the deep-space exploration puzzle, they all agree that working in such close proximity to the Kennedy Space Center provides major benefits.
“It is a huge advantage to have a physical, brick-and-mortar location here at the Space Life Sciences Lab. The launchpad is right over there,” Foster says. “I can just walk down the hall and talk with someone about how to get my science into space. Someone on the next floor can help me build hardware that can accommodate my plants or animals or cells. So we can get our science to space faster, and I really hope that encourages businesses, governments and other universities to want to collaborate with us, to build partnerships.”
“The University of Florida is beautifully and strategically placed to be a leader in conducting the science that’s going to move humanity out into the solar system,” Schuerger adds.
Nils Averesch
Assistant Professor of Space Biology n.averesch@ufl.edu
Jamie Foster Professor of Microbiology and Cell Science jfoster@ufl.edu
Andrew Schuerger Professor of Plant Pathology schuerg@ufl.edu
“Mars has carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is the basic feedstock every biological organism on Earth has been using for millions of years.”
—Nils
Averesch
Nils Averesch
Before he started probing outer space to discover planets, Jason Dittmann was studying the depths of the oceans. As an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, his first research involved mathematical models of ocean circulation. But, like the gravitational pull of a celestial body, Dittmann’s abiding interest in astronomy prevailed by his junior year. Now, he’s an assistant professor in UF’s Department of Astronomy. Dittmann’s work focuses on extrasolar planets that orbit stars outside our solar system. In particular, he studies how exoplanets form and the contents of their atmospheres. Here, Dittmann explains the joys and challenges of peering into the universe, looking for new planets that can be 1,500 or more light years away.
Why did you decide to concentrate on finding exoplanets and studying their atmospheres?
Exoplanet science was definitely my first interest in astronomy. I did a class project where we learned how to use telescopes and take data of an exoplanet transit. That data eventually became my first publication, so it was just that way from the beginning. In graduate school, I did one project about supernovae instead of exoplanets. That was when I discovered that I just really liked planets. Every planet in the solar system is unique with all sorts of unusual features. Studying planets that surround other stars captures that same sense of wonder in me.
9 Questions with Jason Dittmann
What does studying exoplanets tell us about the origins and nature of the universe?
Studying exoplanets and their parent stars lets us understand more about our own solar system and everything in it. One thing we still don’t know is whether the Earth and our solar system are common. The only way to know if we live in a rare outcome of the universe is by trying to find more planets. Of course, the search for habitable planets a nd eventually life is a part of that. So, the search for planets is really a better way to understand our place in the universe.
How did you get the idea to detect exoplanets that originated outside the Milky Way Galaxy and what have you found so far?
Some of my current work stems from the idea that NASA’s Kepler t he most successful planet-hunting space telescope stared at a very specific part of the galaxy for four years. And future missions like NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will look into the center of the galaxy. So people have started talking about whether different planets form in different galactic environments. My thought was ‘What about the galaxies orbiting the Milky Way?’ Those stars are way too far away to be observable, but the trick is that the Milky Way is currently “eating” and merging with other galaxies and has done so in the past. So
there are stars a nd presumably their planets currently in the Milky Way that were born outside of our galaxy. If we look at those stars and try to find planets, we’re effectively measuring the planet formation history of other galaxies.
How do you determine which exoplanets are worthy of further study?
The planets we want to study depend on the questions we’re asking. The easiest thing to do is to look at all of the closest ones or the ones around the brightest stars. That is a choice of convenience. It’s easier to look at these planets because we get more photons more light f rom the target. Otherwise, the two main things that drive our choice of target are the planet’s temperature and whether it is a gaseous or a rocky planet. If we’re interested in habitability, we don’t want a planet that’s 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. We’ll want one that’s a few hundred degrees Kelvin. (Three-hundred degrees Kelvin is approximately room temperature on Earth.) Or if we are interested in Jupiter-like planets, we’ll look at the biggest ones.
What exoplanets have you discovered and how much if at all —do they resemble Earth, Mars or Venus?
I’m the primary discoverer of one planet, LHS 1140b. It’s a bit bigger than the Earth but is made out of rocks and its temperature makes it possible that life could exist. Confirming that would be a multi-decade effort but I consider it a very compelling target. LHS 1140b is about 49 light years away from Earth in the Cetus constellation. Its host star is a red dwarf with low activity, making it conducive to potential habitability. Very recently, the planets in another system, known as TRAPPIST-1, are all turning out to not have atmospheres.
How are you using artificial intelligence to find smaller planets that you might not otherwise be able to detect?
The difficult part about finding planets is that they orbit stars. It makes it hard to disentangle the star and the planet in data. And it gets harder as the target planet gets smaller. One thing I’m doing with one of my graduate students is using AI tools and UF’s HiPerGator supercomputer to better remove “noise” from space telescopes’ data. We’re essentially folding in everything we know about the star and everything we know about the telescope. Then, we’re using AI to try to identify small planets in the data. We have discovered a new planet with this technique so we’re hoping to expand on it and hopefully find more planets this way.
What intrigued you about the opportunities at UF?
The HiPerGator supercomputer is a very big hammer, so now everything looks like a nail to me. If I want to try something out, it’s easy to just throw supercomputer time at it and see if it’s viable, and that’s great. Another of the big, compelling things about UF is instrumentation capabilities. There are people in the department who have built real instruments for telescopes. That’s something I’m interested in but not formally trained to do. My graduate students are accomplishing a lot. There are opportunities here that I wouldn’t have elsewhere. I know if I get an idea I want to pursue, there’s almost certainly a mechanism to find support. I’ll admit that when it comes to March Madness, I’m still going to root for Arizona but there’s a spot in my heart that’s growing for the Gators every year, too.
How might UF’s new Astraeus Space Institute advance your work?
I’m very interested in potentially building a high-resolution infrared spectrograph with better resolution than NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Making that happen will require a lot of resources and team support. Having a space institute at UF is more than I could have hoped for because it will bring together all the people and infrastructure needed to support these types of projects. Even though my work is a small part of the spectrograph project, I think there’s real potential for the space institute to help move work from the lab and into space. Mission support is critical and being able to have a one-stop shop for everything we might need is huge.
What big scientific question propels your work?
Right now, the big scientific question behind my work is “How far can we push this instrument?” I like thinking about all the ways that we can take a misbehaving spacecraft and data set and “fix” it so that we can find smaller signals that people haven’t seen before. Machine learning and AI’s ability to do things like this in a nonlinear and non-intuitive way makes it possible to revisit old data sets with a new set of tools and really squeeze them for as much science as possible. There’s a lot of satisfaction in taking data that are sitting there and finding something new in it.
Jason Dittmann Assistant Professor of Astronomy jasondittmann@ufl.edu
John Jernigan
James Hu
Kathryn Deluca
Elliana Bocchi
Venus and Jupiter at sunset Venus, Jupiter & a meteor trail
Star trails over Paynes Prairie
Heavenly Beauty
For Elizabeth Lada, studying the heavens is about more than science. Since early 2023, she has been teaching The Art and Science of Astrophotography. After starting with 35 students, demand grew the class to 46 people with a waiting list of more than 100. Lada, a professor and chair of the UF astronomy department, aims to do more than just hone students’ technical skills.
Working with astronomy alumnus Noah Rashkind, the course came to life. Students started with cell phones and digital cameras. Then, a recent UF technology grant made five specialized telescopes available.
“By merging our understanding of science with technical skills and creativity, we hope to nurture a deeper appreciation for outer space,” Lada says. “Students learn to see beyond data and equations, discovering the beauty and wonder of the objects in the universe. We hope this approach fosters a more profound connection to the cosmos, inspiring awe and a lifelong passion for further exploration.”
Aleksander Mnatsakanyan
Barreca
The Rosette Nebula, captured with a five-minute exposure.
